Louise left her brougham in Piccadilly and walked across the Green Park. Bellamy, who was waiting, rose up from a seat, hat in hand. She took his arm in foreign fashion. They walked together towards Buckingham Palace--a strangely distinguished-looking couple.
"My dear David," she said, "the man perplexes me. To look at him, to hear him speak, one would swear that he was honest. He has just those clear blue eyes and the stolid face, half stupid and half splendid, of your athletic Englishman. One would imagine him doing a foolishly honorable thing, but he is not my conception of a criminal at all."
Bellamy kicked a pebble from the path. His forehead wore a perplexed frown.
"He didn't give himself away, then?"
"Not in the least."
"He took you out and showed you the spot where it happened?"
"Without an instant's hesitation."
"As a matter of curiosity," asked Bellamy, "did he try to make love to you?"
She shook her head.
"I even gave him an opening," she said. "Of flirtation he has no more idea than the average stupid Englishman one meets."
Bellamy was silent for several moments.
"I can't believe," he said, "that there is the least doubt but that he has the money and the portfolio. I have made one or two other inquiries, and I find that his firm was in very low water indeed only a week ago. They were spoken of, in fact, as being hopelessly insolvent. No one can imagine how they tided over the crisis."
"The man who was watching for you?" she inquired.
"He makes no mistakes," Bellamy assured her. "He saw Laverick enter that passage and come out. Afterwards he went back to his office, although he had closed up there and had been on his homeward way. The thing could not have been accidental."
"Why do you not go to him openly?" she suggested. "He is, after all, an Englishman, and when you tell him what you know he will be very much in your power. Tell him of the value of that document. Tell him that you must have it."
"It could be done," Bellamy admitted. "I think that one of us must talk plainly to him. Listen, Louise,--are you seeing him again?"
"I have invited him to come to the Opera House to-night."
"See what you can do," he begged. "I would rather keep away from him myself, if I can. Have you heard anything of Streuss?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Nothing directly," she replied, "but my rooms have been searched--even my dressing-room at the Opera House. That man's spies are simply wonderful. He seems able to plant them everywhere. And, David!--"